Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

“I’ll be there. Be careful, Larry.”

“I will. So long, Maggie.”

He hung up, and then remembered he hadn’t told her he loved her.

Summer was dying.

It was the end of August, and the leaves were beginning to turn already on some of the giant trees surrounding the house he had designed. There was a silence to the land. Regally, the house sat atop the slope, commanding the land and the sky. He inspected the exterior and then found six identical keys hanging on a nail in the garage. He took one from the bunch and opened the front door. The smell of fresh paint was still in the house, and another exciting familiar smell, the smell of newness. He closed the door behind him and stood silently in the entrance hall.

He was glad he was alone.

Here, surrounded by something he had created, something which had been born in his mind, something which had come from his hands to take visible form, like static electricity bursting in yellow spurts from the fingertips, here he was glad he was alone.

He walked through the house, into the enormous glass-enclosed living room, into the small, intimate room of stone and wood, upstairs to the study with the world at its feet, and then downstairs again to the kitchen and the dining room and back into the magnificent living room of glass where the wilderness stretched beyond to the edge of the sky.

And then he walked through the house again, a small black note-book in his hands this time, jotting down small corrections to be made. When he finished his formal inspection tour, he sat in the stone-and-wood room on the first floor, sat with his back to the stone wall, and there was a smile on his face and a peculiarly tender wistfulness in his eyes.

He sat alone for a long time.

Then he went out of the house and walked back to the car, and hesitated with his hand on the door handle, looking down the road to where the house reached for the sky, seemed ready to soar upward into the clouds if only it could break free of the foundation. He started the car and drove back to the city. He called Altar from a phone booth and told him he’d just inspected the house. It was a good house and a beautiful one, even though there were some minor changes and corrections Di Labbia would have to make. But as soon as the certificate of occupancy was issued, Altar could move in. He suggested that three hundred dollars be withheld from the final payment until Di Labbia had made the changes. He wasn’t at all sure that Altar heard a word he said.

This was August twenty-eighth and The Fall of a Stone would be published on the thirtieth.

When he returned to the apartment that afternoon, Mr. Harder opened the door for him.

“Welcome back,” he said. “We’ve landed!”

In the living room, Mrs. Harder was crying and hugging Linda close to her breast. “But why didn’t you tell me, darling?” she said. “A mother should know. Her own daughter’s wedding, her baby daughter.”

Larry took Eve aside and whispered, “What happened?”

“Daddy kept giving it to her,” Eve said. “She finally gave in.”

“What are you drinking, Larry?” Mr. Harder said, beaming. “I’ve got another son in the fold and that’s an occasion for real celebration. I’m a man who’s been surrounded by jabbering females all his life!”

They drank together, the three men. As Larry tilted his glass, he heard Lois whisper, “How was it, Lindy? Did he make you take off all your clothes?” and he almost choked on his whisky.

The family had a late dinner together. In the television room, where Chris and David sat watching the screen after their earlier meal, the forecasters said that the hurricane Felicia had hit the North Carolina coast, passing inland near Morehead City and Beaufort, leaving floods and great destruction everywhere behind her. Felicia was moving northward. If she kept on course, she would pass through Chesapeake Bay and then strike the New York area sometime the next day, Thursday.

David said to Chris, “Ain’t Disneyland on yet?”

Thursday came.

In the afternoon they left the children with Mrs. Harder and went out for a walk. The city was gray and silent. The people in the streets felt the coming storm. Unconsciously, they all looked skyward.

For Eve, the city had always been a magic place. The moment she arrived in New York, her step quickened, and her shoulders pulled back, and she held her head more erect. It was a city full of busy people rushing to get someplace. You could feel the quickened tempo the moment you stepped off the train. You could feel it surging along the pavements, echoing raucously in the beep of the taxicab horns, singing in the neon, rushing skyward with the buildings. The city was a treasure box of energy, and you wanted to laugh over your wealth, pick up the jewels of the city and let them trickle through your fingers while your laugh bellowed to the concrete and steel pulsing with life.

The city was there on that Thursday too, but it seemed dull and lifeless and sad to Eve. Walking along Fifth Avenue with Larry, she thought, This is the most beautiful street in the world, but the thought was shallow because she could muster no real enthusiasm for it.

“Mama wants to give the kids a reception on Saturday,” she said. “At the apartment. Can we stay until then?”

“You can stay,” Larry said.

“What about you?”

“I’m leaving tonight,” he told her.

“Leav—? Oh, yes. I’d forgotten.”

They walked silently. A wind was rising. It seemed as if it would begin raining any moment.

“Where will you go, Larry?” she asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“What time are you leaving tonight?”

“About nine.”

“So late?”

“I like to drive at night.”

“There’s a hurricane coming,” Eve said. “Couldn’t you wait until—”

“It may by-pass us completely.”

“And it may not. Doesn’t Linda’s wedding mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does.”

“Then you can stay for the reception? It’ll only be family and some friends. It’ll seem very strange if you’re not there.”

“You can tell them I had some important business to attend to. Upstate.” He shrugged. “I’ve been called away before.”

“Yes,” she said. “But Larry, there is a storm coming. Is it so important that you leave tonight?”

“I want to get away,” he said.

“I’m not trying to stop you, but you can leave Sunday or Monday, can’t you? Why tonight?”

“I’m leaving tonight,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what I say any more, does it?” she said, and he didn’t answer.

They sat at the fountain outside the Plaza. Eve clenched her hands in her lap, and she stared straight ahead of her into the grayness of a city waiting for a storm. She sat with a growing sadness inside her. She sat feeling empty and drained and dead.

She had tried on Tuesday to explain things to Linda, and she could not. Now sitting at the fountain, she tried to explain things to herself and she was faced with the same impenetrable haze, the same inability to reason or think clearly. If only she could think. If only she could lay things out simply — this and this are so, that and that are not — if only she could think.

But the only sure thought she had was that uncertainty was certain. She had put complete trust in a man she thought existed, and the trust had been broken. For some reason this man had chosen to walk alone, ignoring her by his side. Alone. And you could not talk to someone who was alone, you could not reach that person, you could not touch him. He could not hold you close and comfort you, he could not say the things you longed to hear, he could not say, “It’s all right, I’m here with you. I’ll always be with you.” Speechless, faceless, mindless, the man who sat beside her was a stranger.